The small aircraft sets down smoothly and slows to a stop. I hold on to Ben’s seat as inertia pulls me forward. During the short flight, I couldn’t bring myself to speak to Ben. All I did was gaze at his back — the small cockpit lights pinpricking the darkness — and wonder if we’ll ever meet again.
Ben takes off his night vision goggles and turns to us. ‘Elevation, five hundred metres. Can’t get you farther up; no landing strip anywhere near the observatory.’
And we’ll not get any lower than this. Runner and Kat consider all surface and groundwater from below five hundred metres elevation, as not safe to drink.
‘Thanks, Ben,’ Runner says, grabs his ruck and rifle, snaps his night vision goggles on, and jumps out without a goodbye.
I’m not as tough. I punch Ben’s shoulder and give him a peck on his cheek.
He grins. ‘Don’t you worry, honey. You’ll be back in no time and then I’ll let you ravage my hard body.’
The tension falls off. I bark a laugh and punch his shoulder once more. As I turn away from him, a memory of Yi-Ting hits me square in the chest. How she stood at the mouth of the comm tent when we were leaving, her outline cut sharply against the moonlight. She placed her hand over her heart, then to her lips before she waved her kiss to Runner. His expression was severe and he hid it quickly, lowering his head and bending down to tie his boot laces that were perfectly tied already.
‘I’ll bring him back for you,’ I’d told her and regretted this silly promise at once. For many years, Runner worked alone. He doesn’t need anyone to watch out for him.
I shoulder my pack, snap the night vision goggles in place, and grab my rifle. My boots hit the dry hard clay; the bulk on my back bending my knees upon impact. I straighten up and we walk a few metres, giving Ben’s machine space to take off.
We watch the small plane disappear, then trot to the very end of the runway, carving small marks into three trees while we walk back to the other end, assessing the distance as we go. We take our time, slinking from cover to cover and letting our rifles and scopes adjust to the higher humidity, temperature, and elevation. Silently, we lie down in the dirt, remove our night vision goggles, and aim our infrared lasers at the closest knife-mark. Nine hundred and eighty-seven metres distance shows in my scope in tiny red numbers. The night-eye paints the surroundings in shades of grey and green.
I aim and snap the first shot, watch where the bullet rips off the bark, adjust my scope and fire again. The night echoes the muzzle report. Fomp. Fomp. I know the BSA aren’t anywhere close, else Ben and Yi-Ting would have seen them on their flights. Still, I hate to produce noise. It’s as if I scream at the enemy, ‘I’m here! Come and get me!’
Two more shots for the next tree and another two fired at the farthest one. Then it’s Runner’s turn. While he zeroes-in his rifle, I try to adjust my eyes to the darkness. No stars light up the night, no moon. My pupils are cranked open to the max, but all I see are faint silhouettes in the corners of my vision. When I lower the night vision goggles, the world around me appears clear and crisp. I can breathe easier. The darkness was stupefying and Runner’s muzzle report did nothing to reassure me.
‘That’ll have to do,’ he says and stands. He brushes the dirt off his pants and we begin our march uphill. The SatPad is stuck in a side pocket of his rucksack. We’ll use it only in an emergency. We have no idea if the BSA can tap our communications. Odd, to be so cut off from the others. But I’m more creeped out by the fact that we can’t zero-in our rifles when we’re up at the observatory. The temperature and pressure up there will be lower, meddling with our finely tuned weapons. But it would be even creepier to fire shots in an area where the BSA could show up at any moment. The last thing we want is to let them know we are on the island.
There’s a one to two day hike ahead of us until we reach the border between Taitung and Pingtun at roughly one thousand seven hundred metres elevation. We’ll install an amplifier once we reach the crest. During briefing, we took a very close look at the images Ben and Yi-Ting shot of the observatory. It houses the island’s only intact satellite control centre. In the light of things, the observatory gained a whole new level of interest to us. The goal of our mission is to investigate and install a couple of mics. But getting inside the building undetected is another story.
While we quietly hike through the night, my thoughts are free to roam. And they travel unbidden to sweet Yi-Ting and the way she bid Runner goodbye. When I step on a twig and produce a crack, Runner stops. His pale grey-green features show surprise.
‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘Stupid boots. I shouldn’t have put them on. Give me a second.’
I pull off my footwear, tie them on top of my ruck and make sure they don’t flop around; then I shoulder my pack again and nod at him to walk on.
I know what made me slip into boots in the first place. Taiwan is home to a variety of poisonous snakes and walking around barefooted became less enticing the more I thought about it. But there are also snakes that jump off trees and into your face whether you wear boots or not. I grew up barefooted and know how to move silently through the woods.
Drawing the attention of a bunch of heavily armed morons in black suddenly seems much worse than stepping on a Banded Krait.
Roughly four hours later, Runner stops and choses a spot to camp for the night. We drink water and eat a thick paste made of dried fruit, honey, and nuts.
‘We’ll hunt tomorrow. I don’t want to touch our provisions unless it’s absolutely necessary,’ he says.
‘What do you want to shoot? Deer?’ I’m trying to picture a bird the size of a quail, shot with Runner’s .50 caliber rifle. I wonder if the bird would be recognisable or if it would disintegrate into a spray of blood and feathers.
‘My air rifle is in my rucksack.’
‘Oh. Okay. Can we make a fire?’
‘In the daytime, yes. I’ll spread a tarp up high over it and we’ll be fine. Uh, another thing. Hygiene is paramount here—’
‘Do I stink?’ I sniff at my hand and wrist.
‘What? No! What I mean is, as long as we are below one thousand five hundred metres elevation, the forest here is full of biting and stinging insects, as you’ve noticed.’
I have. And I’ve slapped at the buggers a million times already. It hasn’t helped at all.
‘They can give you nasty infections,’ he continues. ‘Combined with this heat and humidity, you won’t last long. It’s not a problem on Itbayat because the stiff breeze blows mosquitos away from our camp. But here, it is. In the morning, I want you to check your clothing for inhabitants, make sure every scratch and every mosquito bite is clean and healing well. Make sure you do that daily.’
‘Now, I’m itching.’
He grunts a laugh, ties his hammock between two trees, and spreads the mosquito net over it. I set up mine between one of his trees and the one next to it. He’s talked about Dengue fever before. Although the disease is life-threatening in only a small portion of infected people, it would render me vulnerable in combat. You just can’t aim well when you run a high fever.
‘We’ll have to pack up before sunrise,’ I mumble when I roll up in my suspended bed and take off my night vision goggles.
‘I’ll wake you. Sleep now.’
Runner and his quiet commands, they work better than anything. I slow my breathing, and imagine the wiggling of leaves in the breeze high above me, and then I drift off.
———
When I wake up, he’s already sipping water from his canteen and re-analysing the images Kat transferred to his SatPad before we left.
‘Here, I found these next to the stream.’ Runner holds out two yellow fruits. I’ve never seen this kind.
‘You sure they are edible?’
‘Yes. I also refilled your canteen. Give me a minute, then I’ll brief you.’
I drink the cold water and watch Runner.
‘Jin-Shui Observatory.’ He points to the map on his SatPad. ‘This is where the last BSA attack was reported before we lost contact with our Taiwanese Sequencers. Fifteen kilometres away as the crow flies. The difficult terrain will make it an eight to twelve hour hike.’
‘How many Taiwanese did they kill?’
‘Approximately three thousand Taiwanese, Chinese, Philippinos, and Japanese lived here before the BSA arrived. Ben and Yi-Ting didn’t scan the entire south half of the island, so there might be people left. But we can’t be sure.’
My teeth pierce the skin of the fruit and sweetness explodes in my mouth. ‘Do you have a theory why the observatory appears undamaged?’ I ask, wiping my chin.
‘There’s nothing on the footage, which doesn’t mean it’s perfectly untouched. Damage of the structure seems minimal, though.’
I drink the last sip of water and sit down next to him.
‘We’ll follow this ravine until we reach an elevation of at least one thousand five hundred metres,’ Runner says, his index finger trailing across a greyish river bed that winds up along green mountains. He stuffs the SatPad into his ruck and stands. ‘We’ll leave in thirty minutes. I’ll prepare camouflage while you wash. One hundred metres down the river, a group of large trees protects you from view.’ He nods up at the sky. ‘Never forget the satellites. We’re safe only when the cloud cover is thick.’
When I make to leave, he adds, ‘Collect a few handfuls of chestnuts from the trees down there. They are sweet and can be roasted.’
Taking care to slip from tree cover to tree cover, I walk down to the small stream. Water is hopping over stones and whispering down the mountain. I pluck a few leaves off a chestnut tree and shed my brown cotton pants and sweatshirt. I never wear short sleeves, my skin makes for a repulsive sight. There are freckles on my shoulders and my chest, on my upper arms and very lightly on my lower arms as well. The dots are interrupted by crisscrossing scars that are more sensitive to touch than the unblemished skin surrounding them. If anyone saw this, they would probably retch.
I scoop up a handful of the reddish clay from the side of the stream, then walk a few steps and sit down in the water that feels wonderfully refreshing in this hot, humid weather. I rub the chestnut leaves over my hair and skin then wash the thin layer of foam off. A layer of clay is next. My fingertips rub the gritty stuff into hair and skin, working my way from head down to my chest. I rarely look at myself, but the changes my body has gone through in the past year are undeniable and rather unsettling. My breasts seem to be in the way all the time, the soft orange hairs in my armpits and between my legs tickle and amplify my body odour. When I was a child, I washed once a week. Now, I have to wash every day to not stink like a mix between a rotting pear and a fox. Sometimes I wonder why the others don’t crinkle their nose at me. But maybe it’s just me being repelled by my own smell?
I think of Sandra and how she kissed all my secret places. She must have found my flavours quite delicious, because she didn’t seem to be able to get enough of me into her mouth. I loved to feel her soft skin and hair, but other than that, I didn’t feel much. In my heart, I mean. I wonder how love might feel. What does Yi-Ting feel for Runner? I wish I could step in between the two, just for a second, to learn what this love thing is — to taste it. In my head, the word “love” has the flavours of earth and wind and fire, mingling with my own imagination of what it might be like to feel this deeply for someone.
I bend down to wash my feet, taking care to clean the soles and the gaps between my eight toes. I quickly got used to the loss of the two small toes on my left foot. But I’ll never forget how I lost them. The unconscious Runner was wrapped up in a tent, the bite wound on his neck septic, and I was trapped up to my chest in a frozen river, both rifles wet, and a large pack of hungry wild dogs just behind us. I made it out of the river eventually and walked for who knows how far until Katvar and his sled dogs found us. My limbs were so frozen that my two toes couldn’t be saved.
I touch the small dog pendant at my neck. Katvar had carved it from a wild boar tooth, put it on a leather string, and given it to me when we said goodbye. He’d told me in his mute way that he liked me. Does he feel love? Or rather, did he feel love? Was it hard for him to let me go? I doubt he’d felt much, because we didn’t even kiss. All that had ever happened was a touch of his fingertips to my lips. Besides, I don’t miss him, and wouldn’t one miss the other when there’s love between two people? But maybe I’m unable to miss or love anyone. I don’t even miss my parents. I miss things, like the reservoir and the turbines I used to fix. But I don’t miss people. Maybe Cacho recognised this coldness in me and thought that I would make an excellent sniper. Maybe he thought I could kill without conscience.
I gaze down at my hands, where a pool of water shows my reflection. With a shiver I slap it in my face, rinse the clay off my hair and body, and leave to get dressed and collect chestnuts.
Runner sits where I left him. But now his face is darkened by a large hat made of palm leaves. White teeth flash in a smile. ‘Make yourself one as well. We want to look like trees from above when we don’t wear our ghillies. I’ll wash now, then we leave.’